GOP candidate’s message board mystery: CNN says he’s a ‘black NAZI,’ he’s suing and says he was hacked
CNN wants the court to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed by North Carolina Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson attack reported that he had posted explicitly on the message board of a pornographic website. The network said Robinson presented no evidence that the network believed its story was false or broadcast it recklessly.
The September report said Robinson, who ran unsuccessfully for governor This month, left more than a decade-old statements on a message board in which, in part, he called himself a “black NAZI” and said he liked trans porn. The report also said he preferred Adolf Hitler to then-President Barack Obama and criticized the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is “worse than a maggot”.
Robinson, who is seeking to become the state’s first black governor, said he did not write those posts and sued in October, just before early in-person voting began.
While filing a motion to dismiss Thursday in Raleigh federal court, CNN attorneys said Robinson’s arguments suggest he may have been the victim of a computer hacking operation that created fake messages would entail a series of events that were not only “unbelievable but also ridiculous.”
Generally, a public official claiming defamation must either tell the defendant that the statement he or she is making is false or do so with reckless disregard for the truth.
“Robinson did not and could not plausibly allege facts showing that CNN published the Article with actual malice,” attorney Mark Nebrig wrote in a memorandum supporting the motion to dismiss. Mark Nebrig wrote in a memo supporting the motion to dismiss, adding that the lawsuit “does not include a single allegation demonstrating that CNN doubts the authenticity.” about its report.”
As for Robinson, who has a history of making inflammatory comments on topics such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rightsCNN’s story nearly led to the collapse of his campaign. After the report aired, most of his top campaign staff quit, advertising from the Republican Governors Association stopped and Republicans distanced themselves from him, including President-elect Donald Trump.
Robinson lost to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein by nearly 15 points and will leave office at the end of the year.
Robinson’s lawsuit was originally filed in state court. In part, they say that CNN chose to run its report on data from the Naked website, which was hacked several years ago and ran on outdated, vulnerable software. His lawsuit claims the network did nothing to verify the posts. He is seeking monetary damages.
Thursday’s memo highlights the network’s story, including a paragraph in which CNN journalists show how they connected Robinson to a username on the nude website.
As the CNN story previously stated, the memo said the network matched the message board account’s details with other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, email addresses and names. his full. The memo said the details the account holder discussed matched the timing of Robinson’s marriage, where he lived at the time, and that both Robinson and the account holder had mothers who worked at a historical university. black people’s history. CNN also said it found matching words used by both the SnakeAfrica account holder and in Robinson’s social media posts.
“This is unlikely to be a case of, as Robinson alleges, CNN ‘disregarding or deliberately avoiding the truth’ rather than investigating,” Nebrig said, later adding that the network had “no reason to There is no reason to seriously doubt that Robinson is the author” of the posts. .
Robinson’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Friday. The lawsuit says anyone could have used Robinson’s breached data to create accounts on the internet.
His state lawsuit also brought against Louis Love Money, a former porn store employee who alleged in a music video and a media interview that for several years starting with In 1990, Robinson frequented a porn store where Money was working and Robinson purchased pornographic videos from him. . Robinson said that’s not true.
Money filed for his own dismissal in a state lawsuit. But CNN has since moved the case to federal court, saying it is the proper venue for a North Carolina resident like Robinson and a Georgia-based company like CNN and the allegations against Money. not related.
